What does game theory and cancer have to do with each other. I am not sure but this interesting workshop hosted by the Princeton Physical Sciences-Oncology Center and Johns Hopkins University might help you figure that out.

An announcement about the event reads:

Registration is now open for the Workshop on Game Theory and Cancer, scheduled on August 12-13 in Baltimore, MD, and jointly hosted by our Princeton PS-OC and Johns Hopkins University. The main goal of this workshop is to provide a dialogue between leading basic researchers and clinical investigators that would help make headway against the very stubborn problem of cancer, and to jolt the oncology community into confronting the serious clinical problems that have previously been avoided.

The fact that cancer cells frequently re-emerge after initial therapeutic attempts has dogged the efforts of oncologists to save patients’ lives for decades. According to Princeton physicist, Robert H. Austin, cancer cell resistance is primarily a biological reaction to stress and “one of the great unsolved, and deadly, problems in oncology.”

On Thursday, February 4, Austin will discuss, “The Physics of Cancer,” during a 3 p.m. joint colloquium hosted by Johns Hopkins University departments of Physics and Astronomy and Biophysics in the Schafler auditorium of the Bloomberg Center on the Homewood campus. The talk is free and open to the public.

Austin is principal investigator for Princeton’s Physical Science-Oncology Center and a trans-network partner with Johns Hopkins Engineering in Oncology Center, both of which are National Cancer Institute funded organizations.

Austin will address the general principles of physics, ecology, and biology and why recurrence of resistant cancer cells seems to be a universal phenomenon in cancer. He says that “evolution in small, stressed habitats is key to the rapid and inevitable re-emergence of resistance of cancer cells” (and) “that modern techniques of physical probes, genomics, proteomics and nanotechnology will allow us to analyze the evolutionary path of these emergent resistant cells.”

Tilak Ratnanather, an associate research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, is one of 14 winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. The honor, presented last week, is given by the White House to individuals and organizations in recognition of the crucial role that […]